THE STANDOUT MOMENTS FROM THE LIGHT SIDE OF CARRIE FISHER’S CAREER
WORDS CHRIS HEWITTTHE DEBUT
SHAMPOO(1975)
Fisher was 17 when she made this memorable
two-scene appearance in her veryirst ilm. When
Warren Beatty’s randy hairdresser George turns
up at the mansion of his latest conquest Felicia
(Lee Grant), he inds her young daughter Lorna
(Fisher) instead. Clad in a tight tennis outit, the
precocious Lorna takes George to the kitchen,
where they lirt awkwardly while munching on
crunchy metaphors, until Fisher breaks the
tension with a masterfully delivered, “You wanna
fuck?” As calling cards go, it’s a doozy.THE KILLER LINE
THE BLUES BROTHERS(1980)
Released a month afterThe Empire Strikes Back,
this saw her teaming up with Dan Aykroyd, who
not only saved her life by performing the
Heimlich manoeuvre when she choked on a
Brussels sprout in her trailer, but later asked her
to marry him. Despite that Aykroyd afiliation,
she played the spurned ex of John Belushi’s Jake
Blues in the famously out-of-control John Landis
comedy. In the ilm’s best running gag, Fisher’s
Mystery Woman (we never learn her name) rocks
up out of nowhere and tries to kill the oblivious
brothers with an impressive armoury including a
rocket launcher, a lamethrower and a
submachine gun. And each time the Blues dust
themselves off and walk away. After being largely
silent throughout, Fisher’s big scene comes at the
end, when she inally corners Jake in a sewer and
reveals her motive: he left her at the altar. “I
remained celibate for you,” she hisses. “To obtain
the seven limousines for the wedding party, my
father used up his last favours with Mad Pete
Trullo.” Sadly, after Jake seduces her with a lash
of his baby browns, he leaves her lying in the dirt.
That’s no way to treat a princess.THE MASTERCLASS
WHEN HARRY MET SALLY...(1989)
It would have been all too easy for this role to
be a standard romcom best friend, dispensing
wisdom and memorable quotes with equal
aplomb. And while Fisher’s Marie does doplenty of that inWhen Harry Met Sally...,Nora
Ephron was incapable of writing a role like
that, Rob Reiner (then) of directing it, and
Fisher of acting it. Instead, she gets an inner
life, and her own actual honest-to-goodness
arc. When we irst meet her, Marie is already
Sally’s best friend, but is coming out of
a disruptive affair with a married man. Over
the course of the ilm, she inds love with
Bruno Kirby’s Jess...THE FUN CAMEO
JAY AND SILENT BOB STRIKE
BACK(2001)
Showing up inScream 3meant Fisher shared
a credit with Kevin Smith and Jason Mewes as
Jay and Silent Bob, who also cameoed in that
ilm. A year later she found herself sharing
a scene — and a car — with the duo in their big
breakout road movie. It’s a brief (just over a
minute) cameo from Fisher, as a nun who picks
up the pair, but she still manages to score some
laughs, not least when a confused Jay tries to
go down on her as she’s driving.THE HURRICANE
CATASTROPHE(2015-’17)
When Rob Delaney and Sharon Horgan
needed an actress to play Rob’s mother on
their pin-sharp sitcom, there was only one
choice. Well, choice may not be the right word.
“Sheletus put her in our show,” Delaney
wrote in a piece just after Fisher’s death. As
Mia, a foul-mouthed force of nature described
by Sharon as “a haemorrhoid on an arsehole”,
Fisher is deliciously, devilishly hilarious. She’s
only in four episodes of the irst two series (she
had a bigger role in the third series, which she
inished ilming just days before her death), but
she’s perfectly deployed in each. The standout
is the excruciating moment at the party thrown
after Rob and Sharon’s baby is born when,
having asked Sharon’s parents which part of
Ireland they’re from, Mia launches into a
couldn’t-give-a-shit reply just so she can
crowbar in her one Irish frame of reference:
Riverdance. A glorious monster, and a gift
of a role.carrie fisher: the empire tribute